


like a stolen car

by soldierwitch



Series: bad decisions, but good times [1]
Category: Roswell New Mexico (TV 2019)
Genre: F/M, POV Michael Guerin
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-02-23
Updated: 2019-02-23
Packaged: 2019-11-04 09:11:09
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,994
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17895650
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/soldierwitch/pseuds/soldierwitch
Summary: Maria founds out about Michael and Alex. It doesn't go well.





	like a stolen car

**Author's Note:**

> You and me sitting here spinning gears  
> We're like a stolen car  
> Hand in mine, feeling like this is right  
> But it's just not ours  
> The greatest pretenders forget to remember the lies  
> We're falling forever, we're far from together tonight
> 
> [Broken Frame](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8eg-v6mf0k4) by Alex & Sierra

Everyone walks out. That’s been Michael’s life. A series of closing doors and cars driving away from him. He has never been enough for someone to stay and those that have find ways to make him question why they’re even around. Maria was supposed to be fun. Uncomplicated. And then Alex showed up at his door unannounced, and she was let in on a secret that he has kept for ten years. You can’t exactly tell the woman you’re sleeping with that you’re in love with her friend, and while he had no intention on doing so, she figured it out herself. 

Michael knows he should be grateful and count his blessings. Maria sat there wrapped in his sheets, wearing one of his t-shirts, and didn’t say anything as he worked to send Alex on his way without him knowing just who was in his trailer with him. But he knew the moment that he turned around and looked at her that she put two and two together. There was nothing in his conversation with Alex that could have given them away but somehow Maria knew. He saw it on her stricken face. A look he wishes he could take back or fix with a few kisses and empty words, but he can’t. 

Watching her gather her stuff in silence stings as much as the door that slams behind her. Maria is never silent when wronged. Her tongue is sharp and expletive filled. She hurls words like arrows, striking her target dead center every time. But she didn’t aim at him, barely even looked at him as she left. It’s a bad idea to follow her. Michael knows this and yet he’s throwing a shirt on, putting on shoes, and chasing after her anyway.

“Maria,” he calls, but she doesn’t respond just keeps walking. “What are you going to do walk all the way back to town?”

Michael looks up at the sky. Grey clouds are rolling in from the east. They’re heavy with rain. “It’s going to storm,” he says, trying again.

“Let it,” she says, voice hard. 

“It’s a ten mile walk.”

“I don’t care.”

He jogs past her and stops, blocking her path. “I care.”

Maria laughs. It’s acrid like something sweet gone sour. “You care? We’re nothing but a quick fuck to each other, Guerin.”

Michael reels back. She hasn't called him by his last name since they started messing around. Said it was too impersonal an address for someone who ate her out in the backroom of her bar. It'd been the first time he'd laughed in days. “That’s not...Maria--”

“What,” she asks sharply, pulling her bag higher on her shoulder. “That’s not what this is? So, you’re telling me you weren’t just passing time?”

“No.”

She scoffs. “Right.”

“I wasn’t,” he insists because it’s true. The first time they slept together he was bored. So was she. There was a rolling blackout and it was hot. That was passing time, what they’ve been doing lately has been more than that. He cooked her breakfast, he doesn’t cook anyone breakfast; they’ve never stayed around long enough. With exception to Alex, he’s never wanted them to...until her.

“What then?”

Michael runs a frustrated hand through his hair. “It was supposed to be easy. This”--he says gesturing between the two of them-- “was supposed to be easy. No strings.”

“Except you neglected to mention we happen to share a string. One of my best friends.”

Her voice cracks on the word ‘friends’,  and Michael finds that he’s broken another promise to himself. Never hurt Maria Deluca. Not after what happened to Rosa Ortecho.  _ Damn it. _

“I’m sorry.”

“You’re sorry,” she asks, wiping a tear from her eye before it can trail down her face. “Do you have any idea what you’ve done?”

He has a pretty good idea. This is familiar territory for Michael. He fucked up. Ruined another good thing in his life. Par for the fucking course.

“Was this a game to you,” Maria asks, eyes narrowing causing another tear to fall which she furiously swipes away. “Some sick way of getting to Alex?”

“No,” Michael says firmly. He doesn’t tell her he wasn’t thinking about Alex when he first slept with her or the times after that either. In fact, he hadn’t really been thinking at all. Being with Maria was like shutting his brain off. He just stopped. All the worrying and over-analyzing ceased. Like flipping a switch. 

“Then why?”

Michael doesn’t really know what to tell her. One minute he’d been teasing her about the way her hair was poofing out in the heat, the next he’d been licking a trail down her navel. And then it just kept happening. She smiled at him right before closing and he had her top off the minute she turned the lock on the door. Or the time she had a rough shift and he followed her up to her apartment and got her off twice before she went to bed. Or when he’d been in a terrible mood and she’d kissed his temple and told him, “Tomorrow’s another day,” and slid him a drink on the house. That night they hadn’t slept together, but she let him hold her until they fell asleep and it was the first time he didn’t want to sneak out of someone’s room before the sun cracked the horizon. 

“Why, Michael?”

He runs a hand down his face. “I don’t know, Maria. I--I like you, I guess. I don’t know what you want from me.”

“I want the truth,” she says, swaying forward. “Look me in the eye and tell me you didn’t use me.”

“I didn’t use you,” he says, eyes never leaving hers. “I wouldn’t do that to you.”

“No, you’d just sleep with me knowing that I’d never do that if I’d known about Alex.”

“This wasn’t about Alex.”

“He's in love with you,” she says, brushing past him with a shove to his shoulder. “Of course it was about him.”

Michael turns and grabs her wrist stopping her again. “No, it wasn't” he reiterates. “I--”

“You were lonely,” Maria says not looking at him. Her voice shakes with the words. “You wanted not to feel so alone.”

And there's the arrow, dead center in his heart. 

“I've been loved by three people in my life,” Michael says softly. “Max and Isobel belong to each other more than they've ever belonged to me. And Alex...well, he taught me it's possible to love someone and not want them. Not permanently. Not when it's inconvenient or hard.”

“That doesn't mean you get to hurt people.”

“I didn't mean to hurt you, Maria.”

She turns. “That's always been your problem, Michael. You never mean to do anything. You think life just happens to you, but it doesn't. You're a walking disaster threatening to take the rest of us down with you.”

Michael lets go of her wrist, burned by her words.

Thunder rumbles in the distance.

“But you're right,” Maria says. “A storm's coming so here's what you're going to do. You're going to drive me to my bar and then you're going to get the hell away from me.”

“Maria--”

She holds up her hand. “I'm done talking. Take me home.”

The car ride back to the Wild Pony is quiet and tense. Just last night Michael had Maria laughing so hard her stomach hurt. It had felt good to make someone that happy. So happy that they glowed. With flowers in her hair and a smile on her lips, Maria had been the best thing looking back at him in awhile. His and Alex's conversations had been hit or miss lately and things always ended the same way. Him wanting more than Alex can give. Maria didn't want anything from him but orgasms, and she could take or leave those. No pressure, no stakes.

By the time they reach the bar, rain has begun to shower the town. Michael pulls up to the entrance expecting Maria to hop out and walk away as soon as his truck comes to a stop, but she doesn't. She just clutches her bag to her chest and stares out the window.

“I’ve never been good at endings,” she says. “Excellent at beginnings, alright at middles, but endings...never did master them. People walk out of my life; I don’t often walk out of theirs.”

Michael doesn’t say anything. He’s not sure if he should. If he speaks, she might shut down and leave. He doesn’t want Maria to leave. 

“How did you do it,” she asks, turning her gaze away from the window and on to him. “How did you look at him knowing how I taste? How I sound; how I feel around you. Because I don’t know if I can do what you did. Alex is going to come into this bar one day and all I’m going to see is you. All I’m going to hear is you. I’m his friend, Michael, I shouldn’t know where you like to be touched. How you like to be touched. Or when. I have knowledge I shouldn’t have.”

He turns away, grip tight on the wheel, jaw ticking. Many things circle back to Alex for Michael. He can’t help it. Love is like a feedback loop for him. An endless, repetitive cycle of what he’s wanted for 10 years, and what he possibly may never have. Except for Maria. She was a separate data entry that morphed into its own file. The things he’s done with her are not archived next to the things he’s done with Alex. They are mutually exclusive. Two different parts of his life.

“I don’t look at Alex and see you,” Michael says. “No more than I look at you and see Alex. I see what I want and what I wanted was you. Whenever I could, however I could, for as long as you let me.”

“So, you’re selfish,” Maria says. It’s not a question.

Michael huffs and lets go of the wheel. He looks at her. Takes in her tired eyes and frowning mouth. She’s still in his t-shirt and wearing a jacket she stole from him two weeks ago which she must have forgotten belonged to him first in her rush to get away from him. 

“I’m about as selfish as anyone,” he says. “Tell Alex, don’t tell Alex, it’s not going to change anything for me. He’s still not going to want me, and I’ll still have slept with you...repeatedly.”

“Either way it’ll change things for me.”

He shrugs. “That’s what happens when you give a damn, Maria. I try not to.”

“Bullshit,” she says. “You give a damn. If you didn’t you wouldn’t find new and inventive ways to blow up your life.”

“Yeah, well, misery loves company.”

Maria nods. “Right,” she says and opens the door.

“Wait, Maria,” he says, reaching out and placing his hand on hers. “Am I banned? For real this time.”

She lifts her hand from under his. “I can’t be your band-aid, Michael. I can’t make this better for you because you need it to be.”

“That’s not an answer.”

“It’s the only answer I have for you right now,” she says and gets out, closing the door behind her.

Michael watches Maria run to the entrance of the Wild Pony. When she fumbles with her keys, he holds some of the rain back, so she won’t get too wet as she tries to get the door open. He lets the rain fall once she disappears into the bar.

With a sigh, he puts his truck in drive and heads back to his place, ignoring the voice in his head telling him that while Maria walked away she didn’t say goodbye. The voice sounds suspiciously like his heart, and it’s already been proven that his heart can’t be trusted. _So much for uncomplicated_.  
  
  


**Author's Note:**

> Thank you for reading. Feedback is appreciated. You can find me over on tumblr @asoldierwitch if you'd like to drop a line.


End file.
